this post was submitted on 04 Oct 2025
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I don't mean only the US but in much of the world: in many European countries the populist far right is unseating Christian-Democratic parties (conservative parties), like in Hungary, Slovakia or Czechia. In others like Germany or France the far right is at the gates of power, in the UK, Reform UK is running high in the polls. In Turkey autocratic Erdogan is copying the Putin playbook to systematically dismantle the social-democratic opposition. In Japan, a neo Thatcherite that doesn't hide she honors Japanese war criminals is about to become the new PM.

Something common I see in all these parties is strong disaffection with the current state of their countries and a longing to an idealized past they promise to bring back, to make countries great again...

Except that societies have changed beyond recognition in the last 40 years, emerging China, India, Mexico and a myriad of south east Asian countries can produce cheaper than us in the developed countries, so called first world democracies are now much older and indebted than 40 years ago (no wonder societies have shifted so hard to the right), buying a house is now waaaay more expensive than 40 years ago, you cannot earn a livable wage just assembling toasters like 40 years ago, you just cannot roll automation and digitization back, no matter how much you complain...

The past cannot come back, neither will it come back just because some people want it to. It's completely futile, but people are not rational about this, they're completely emotional and tribal.

It's like a huge, collective effort in denial: denying that we in the developed world are older, not the first ones in the world anymore, that other countries we always considered inferior to us are even surpassing us technologically while we complain and hope for a savior that brings us 40 years back when we, the white guys, ruled all over.

I don't see it happening: being angry and voting the far right may make some people feel good, it may make them feel they're somehow taking their country back, but it's not going to stop China, India and other countries from developing, investing in new technologies and even creating trade alliances that bypass the US or the EU.

My question: was there a moment in history where societies were so shifted to the right like today? How long did it last?

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[–] FelixCress@lemmy.world 41 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Yes, in 1930s. Lasted till 1945.

[–] ZMoney@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago (2 children)

There were huge countervailing forces then. New Deal US. Soviet Union. Socialist parties gaining power the world over. The rise of fascism was limited to a few powerful countries, not systematic like it is today.

[–] FelixCress@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago

Strongly disagree. Fascists wave went through the substantial part of Europe, not a "few powerful countries".

[–] biofaust@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago (4 children)

You called 1920s Italy "powerful"?! As an Italian...let's say I remain baffled.

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[–] Kolanaki@pawb.social 40 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

I've been alive for almost 41 years and this is the first time I've seen anything like this with my own eyes. All other examples happened decades before I was born. The biggest and, HOPEFULLY, most well know example would be Germany in the late 1930s.

[–] Fedizen@lemmy.world 29 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

I think last time this happened a bunch of anti media consolidation laws were passed to prevent rich people from owning everything (unfortunately they were repealed in the 90s in the US) Also taxes, wars. Basically rich people will fund wars to ensure people don't take their money but in doing so they destroy their money because wars kill workers, destroy products and produce nothing of value.

Its easier just to tax rich people and break up the large conglomorates they're using to rig everything. Tech companies would need to be included here. Idk why there isn't a massive tax on all kinds of bad corporate behaviors that lead here: buying companies, mergers, stock buybacks and corporate real estate shenanigans should all have serious taxes associated with them.

[–] bagsy@lemmy.world 14 points 1 week ago

We don't tax those things because we don't have true representation. Our "representatives" do not work for the people, they work for the rich. Senators, Congressman, SC, and the president should all be put in jail if they are convicted of taking bribes. Unfortunately, we have two separate sets of laws in this country, one for the rich, and one for the poor.

[–] BurgerBaron@piefed.social 26 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Humans being awful is most of our entire written history. Bill Wurst has the cliff notes:

https://youtu.be/xuCn8ux2gbs

The powerful made themselves divine deities directly or made up religions where the deity gave them power over others. Conquest, war, rape, tribalism, raids, corruption, oppression, suppression, slavery, spice trade, disease, volancoes causing crop failures and wiping out empires, or causing starving pirate raids who did the same, ice ages causing genetic bottle necks where we almost go extinct, whatever.

You could read David Mitchell's recent book "Unruly" about the ~1600 years of violent dumb misery following the fall of Rome just in the land whuch became the U.K. if you like. Pretty dry material but he does his best as a comedian to get through it all. It's a very long list of short lived Kings (and a couple Queens) murdering each other and peasants while the Northerners did the same and eventually settled and interbred and continued murdering each other and living short violent dumb lives. A lot of them aspired to be like a fictional King Arthur. There's your yearning for past glories. A little like today. It's not real, it's fantasy.

Until the printing press and the renaissance, sort of. Temporarily destabilised the powerful. Kinda like the internet. Or radio broadcast I suppose. The old guard didn't know how to exploit it at first. Printing press fucked up the massively corrupt Catholics at the time, fresh off their crusades and coming up with the idea of paying money to get into heaven. They really hated the idea of peasants learning how to read too. Martin Luther had a bunch of reasons they sucked. One was a complaint about how many little boys each priest kept. Nothing new under the Sun.

Relating any of it to the "right wing" becomes incoherent in a hurry when trying to compare things to modernity. Conservatives are what Royalists became after people kept cutting Royal heads off. Suffice to say though, it was shit fucking awful almost all the time humans have existed.

Looking to the future with climate change in a few hundred years and I expect way more extremism and a lot of death fighting and starving over the dwindling habitable land near the poles.

Eventually the Sun gets too hot even if we were perfect and peaceful and the oceans boil into space. Long before the Red Giant phase swallows the scorched Earth entirely. The end.

Anyways, I've deliberately sterilised myself.

[–] icylobster@lemmy.world 7 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

This is a big reason why I hated learning history. It is very depressing. I'm always amazed how people can't seem to understand things they didn't personally live through. It is a constant cycle of exploitation then revenge on the exploiters and then a new way to exploit.

I'm trying to be hopeful, but it feels like we are in the phase where most need to suffer in order to get to a better place. Climate change is scary, but I try to remember progress can be explosive in ways you don't expect.

[–] BurgerBaron@piefed.social 4 points 1 week ago

Well this is just delving my own personal musings: I think we've evolved to do our best to not understand and bury our collective heads in the sand. Being born with natural critical thinking ability (being driven to seek out maddening truth, rejecting comforting lies) and empathy ability is a rare combination. I think you need both to, as you say, understand things you didn't personally live through. I mean real understanding, not a cold rote memorisation of facts and trivia to pass a government / post secondary tests.

[–] Onyxonblack@lemmy.zip 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I love your comment, very frank about it. Thank you!

[–] BurgerBaron@piefed.social 3 points 1 week ago

Appreciated, I'm glad I could write something at least somewhat impactful while being very brief.

[–] JizzmasterD@lemmy.ca 23 points 1 week ago

Until a war, famine or plague was terrible enough to make people realize that most of their social differences weren’t as important as they thought and they had to rally round an ideal to survive.

[–] Formfiller@lemmy.world 20 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

In ww2 Europe 65-75 people had to die before the pendulum swung back. The far right always is responsible for millions of deaths when in control. I think the best prevention would be identifying people with narcissistic and psychopathic personalities and not let them become leaders. We currently reward them in our system

[–] Maeve@kbin.earth 7 points 1 week ago (1 children)

In ww2 Europe 65-75 people had to die before the pendulum swung back.

🧐

[–] ilinamorato@lemmy.world 13 points 1 week ago (4 children)

They probably meant "65-75 million," but hey, even the typo is correct as long as you're talking about a very specific 65-75 people.

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[–] Zwuzelmaus@feddit.org 15 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

The fascist times throughout Europe. It was at a different time in each country.

Before, there weren't what we would call democracies, but some were democracies at an early stage. Later, people learned to get along with people who voted for other parties.

[–] MolochAlter@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago

Then they collectively forgot about that last part.

[–] hanrahan@piefed.social 13 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

It's all... perspective and relative ?

The UK oversaw the slaughter of Kenyans in the Mau Mau rebellion.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indonesian_mass_killings_of_1965%E2%80%9366?wprov=sfla1

The CIA helping Suharto slaughter Indonesians in a genocide

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indonesian_mass_killings_of_1965%E2%80%9366?wprov=sfla1

Israel's existence is becase the US and UK taking native lands

The Kurds were supposed to be free but too much Oil and that was stopped.

Around 80 years ago, Eric Blair (aka George Orwell) wrote this:

All left-wing parties in the highly industrialized countries are at bottom a sham, because they make it their business to fight against something which they do not really wish to destroy. They have internationalist aims, and at the same time they struggle to keep up a standard of life with which those aims are incompatible. We all live by robbing Asiatic coolies, and those of us who are 'enlightened' all maintain that those coolies ought to be set free; but our standard of living, and hence our 'enlightenment,' demands that the robbery shall continue.

Somewhat more recently, Wendell Berry, in an essay entitled "Word and Flesh", wrote this:

This statement of Orwell's is clearly applicable to our situation now; all we need to do is change a few nouns. The religion and the environmentalism of the highly industrialized countries are at bottom a sham, because they make it their business to fight against something they do not really wish to destroy. We all live by robbing nature, but our standard of living demands that the robbery shall continue. We must achieve the character and acquire the skills to live much poorer than we do. We must waste less. We must do more for ourselves and each other. It is either that or continue merely to think and talk about changes that we are inviting catastrophe to make. The great obstacle is simply this: the conviction that we cannot change because we are dependent on what is wrong. But that is the addict's excuse, and we know that it will not do.

The destruction of the natural world is not the result of global capitalism, industrialisation, ‘Western civilisation’ or any flaw in human institutions. It is a consequence of the evolutionary success of an exceptionally rapacious primate. Throughout all of history and prehistory, human advance has coincided with ecological devastation.” ― John Gray, Straw Dogs: Thoughts On Humans And Other Animals

We pretend we've been anything other then fascist since ...? Most (many) German's in Nazi Germany lived good lives, like most in the developed world have been living.

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[–] MissJinx@lemmy.world 9 points 1 week ago

Berlin 1939

[–] Randomgal@lemmy.ca 7 points 1 week ago (1 children)

It ended with guillotines.

[–] AshMan85@lemmy.world 8 points 1 week ago (1 children)

No, there is more recent time in 1930s germany

[–] bunkyprewster@startrek.website 6 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Ends with invading foreign army liberating USians from fascist dictator.

[–] Maeve@kbin.earth 1 points 1 week ago

It's not their responsibility.

[–] pelespirit@sh.itjust.works 7 points 1 week ago

Look for the grift in every single country you mentioned, because ultimately, that's the goal. They want the power and control of money. A narcissist is probably behind every one too. They think they can do it.

[–] Kornblumenratte@feddit.org 6 points 1 week ago

I'd say all of history until 1968?

[–] DarkAri@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

I think the best thing to do is just find our own alternative communities. Make our own hangouts. Our own clubs. We can still live life and be happy even if the rest of society is shit. Depending on how this upcoming elections goes. I might go underground. Just disconnect from society. Stop talking to normies outside of business. I will have put in my 35 years of fighting. I don't want to be miserable my entire life. I don't want to argue with people my entire life. Maybe it's just impossible to connect with people who arent like us. That doesn't mean we have to be sad. It doesn't mean we have to be alone. We can make our own spaces. Stay off the grid and under the radar. Have fun and have our own culture with people who like us.

[–] TheLeadenSea@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 week ago (6 children)

It constantly goes in cycles, three steps forwards, two steps backward.

[–] LSNLDN@slrpnk.net 4 points 1 week ago

Two steps back somehow in 2025 involves tripping and falling behind by nearly a century

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